


Tanya

by Kastaka



Category: Maelstrom LARP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 06:16:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10781256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/pseuds/Kastaka
Summary: Compiled Tanya fic from lrpdrabbles LJ





	1. Impressions

Tanya not sure what to make of smiling shiny creature Potch. Is very bright and won't stop smiling. Crazy demon thing Aestar that it is talking to is very funny though, especially with good joke about teach people how to 'feel'. 

Smiling shiny creature seem to know lots of crazy demon things, other crazy demon thing Papa Abgal come up behind crazy demon lady and try to go all Huntress on it, is maybe angel, but everyone treats as joke. 

Is very disconcerting with smiling shiny creature keeping smiling all the time, but get to talk to Kass first, so is good, and smiling shiny creature and demon things have not grown pointy teeth and eaten face yet, so day going surprisingly well.

\----

"It. It's a golem."

Tanya assumed had just not been seeing well in firelight, but when see creature next day is very clear. This is nice young man, made of walking stone. Is very strange.

Is glad to make acquaintance of nice young golem man Lode, as is useful to ask things. Would like to get to know better, but is no time and nice young golem man always look busy. Maybe is avoiding crazy axe lady. Oh well, still have to find snake husband and wake from hangover, plenty more paladins in sea, no problem here.

\----

When the Havocstani all troop in, Tanya wonder if Tanya is in wrong place, bad place to be. Here are regulars, look like soldiers, know tavern master well. Is make Tanya kind of homesick for army, but Tanya not part of this army, has not fought alongside or against, is not feel welcome here now they here. 

But is rain outside and Tanya stay and watch, watch mismatched army with its little girls with polearms and makeup, big girl with axe, man with sword and shield. Is good army, Tanya think, crazy mismatched New World army but much caring and warm strength forged in battle. 

Tanya kind of intimidated. This army, Tanya think, do not run away from dead rising from ground in strange land. Would not think well of Tanya if knew her. Better find rubbish army full of stupid recruits instead, then Tanya can shine and no-one ask where Tanya come from.


	2. A Season's Work

Tanya woke up unpleasantly soaking wet. And with a strange feeling in the back of her head, like she had forgotten something really important.

After scrambling out of the stream - it was cold, there were rocks, she was pretty sure she hadn't gone to sleep in it voluntarily - she sat back down against a tree and began to make an inventory of sorts. One axe, if you could call a failure made of stone and wood that barely took an edge by such an exalted name. One jerkin of the most hopeless untreated animal hide she'd had the misfortune to call 'armour'. Some random clothing, and that blouse was looking pretty random, she was almost certain it wasn't hers. And her hat.

It couldn't have been a bad plan. She still had her hat.

She shook her head a little and emptied the worst of the water out of hat and boots. It wasn't too cold here, at least, she wasn't going to freeze to death of it. Immediate concerns having been dealt with, she tried to get her brain back into marching gear. She remembered the battle well enough, remembered running just that bit further off the field and not bothering to stop when the clenching fear had let her back into her right mind, or what was left of it by that point.

Oh yes, then there were the snakes. She'd blundered straight into some kind of net, mute embarrassment all round, the braves cutting her down with their spears and apologetically looting her. Then there'd been quite a nice meal, a lot of drum-banging and fire and shouting, and she'd had two of them on the ground with their own knives before the priest had apologetically pointed out that good show and all, there were about a dozen trained warriors around the fire, but they'd give her a choice for the entertainment she'd brought them.

Maybe it had been a bad plan. Getting a god's attention normally was.

Well, there was nothing for it now. She'd better get up and make the best of it. Walking was going to dry her out a lot better than sitting here leaning on a damp tree, anyway.

\----

It was dark when she got to the festival site, but it looked like someone was either looking out for her or had it in for her, as the angel and the snake walked past.

"I don't suppose you know the _way_ to the Coyote Camp, hmm?" asked the angel, and Tanya fell in seamlessly with the pair of them, looking to all the world like an old friend of theirs. She kept her answers noncommittal and her identification enthusiastic, and the snake seemed to have taken a shine to her, or at least the look she had about her that she could hold her own in a fight. If only she had the equipment to make it more than an elaborate bluff, she mused.

Everyone's eyes were on the snake to start each new confrontation with firelight and suspicious folk, and from their baiting of the one who actually had the protection of the angel she could pick answers out of the air to satisfy her interlocuters that she was no easy prey, that she had backup practically just outside the circle of firelight, lies flowing seamelessly one from the other to weave a shimmering, diaphonous cloak of safety around the deserter.

After she saved his life it got easier. With one creature - gentleman? - definitely having her back, the easy confidence buoyed up her web of deception, covering for the outrageous claims and boisterous self-promotion her companion trailed like firecrackers in the night, like bloodstains from a retreating army. Now, too, she had a mission - the angel had told her to keep this one alive, and following orders was a comfort through the night and a truth she could happily share to bolster her constant lies.

There were a few iffy moments - more angels in the darkness, trying to guide her companion with subtle cues to lose the support of neither, hinting darkly at things she barely knew of but that bought her a few more minutes of misdirection. She thinks she might have blown it when one of the angels reappears around a fire she was quite enjoying, but he's not here for them and scarcely seem to acknowledge their existance, which is just the way she likes it.

At the start of the evening she has no intention of giving in to his advances, but the alcohol and the night air and the strange companions they meet briefly and then leave forever in the dark lower her inhibitions and make her strangely fond of him, at least for the evening. It appears he takes it about as seriously as she does, after all, and she would like to see what the truth is between his outlandish claims and the surgeon's dispassionate assessment of their likelihood... and then there is the shrine of some god she does not understand, and some kind of flirtatious angel, and everything is very, very surreal for some time.

As they stumble out into the night again they do another circuit of the festival, and gradually she remembers what she was trying to do here in the first place. It only takes a little prompting to find the information that the angel was looking for rather some time ago, and she wonders vaguely if it's going to be the death of her as they straggle out towards the huge campfire burning in the clearing up ahead. But no, she is welcomed among them, even given an invitation to join their tribe and their species if she would so choose.

The cheap wine just about does for her, though, and shortly both of them crawl off somewhere into the bushes to sleep.

\----

The snake was still deeply asleep when she woke, and only groaned vaguely when she prodded him, so Tanya brushed off the dew, disentangled herself from the bushes, and headed out to look for more trouble. Either he'd still be where she put him when she got back, or he wouldn't. She didn't blame him for not waking - even she was troubled slightly with a hangover, and he'd been subjected to much more unpleasant forced drinking than she had.

Obviously the most important thing this morning was to get herself an axe worthy of the name. She tried with several traders with no success. Some weren't up yet, some didn't have anything worthy of a main weapon in stock (and she hardly had the resources to waste some on a mere sidearm). Then, of course, it started raining again, and the main tavern still had its doors stubbornly laced against the early hour, much to her disgust.

Another lap, and she found what she was looking for, at least in the immediate sense - 'All welcome', the sign declared, on a warm and waterproof-looking tent with inviting benches and a couple of assorted bar staff bustling around getting the place ready for the day. She ran into a few problems with her complete lack of currency, but after they rejected the stuff she'd been hoping to sell them, they fortunately overvalued the single vineweed berry she'd been saving quite a lot, and the promise of tea and the legitimacy to take a seat in the dry was hers.

There is a very strange creature leaving one of the tables, who she later discovers is yet another angel, and some kind of rant about things on the table which gives her no answers but helps to pass the time while she waits for her tea to be ready. That's when she meets the first tree-person to talk to - she vaguely remembers one from last night, but it was all very confusing around then - when he calls his god by a name that she vaguely recalls from the snakes that dumped her in the river.

She spins him another tale, of course. She's good at reading people, and this one doesn't need to know about any of her previous contacts with natives, would be dangerous to tell that she might well be one of his people in some respects. He leaves quite pleased with her answers, and she debates following him out into the rain to learn more, but the gentleman scholar that she almost runs over in the process of seeing where the dryad has gone seems much more amenable for a nice chat, and in the dry at that.

It is not until the Coyote himself chases her out of the tent that she finally gives up on remaining in the warm and dry, and heads over to the most promising of the traders to maybe fix her axe problem. As she signs away her season's work - hah, like they're going to see a moment of that - she is surprised at the trusting of the traders and the vast amounts of wealth they adorn her with. Not just a nice axe, but better armour than she's ever worn and a handful of good solid change besides.

Poking her nose into the main tavern now it is open, she is swiftly introduced to her countrymen, who she has been avoiding so far all festival. The lack of recognition gratifies her, and she figures there is no harm doing a little nosing around the political situation they seem to have going here, especially if she needs to work out her passage home in a hurry, as those dryads make her have half a thought to. There is some sitting around and some engaging in terrible misunderstandings with some of the more complicated tribesmen - and surprisingly few misunderstandings with the city woman, much as her respect for a piece of paper amuses Tanya - and some talking with another angel, but in the end she is conducted to a shrine of the Sky Father and inside it does rather make her think.

Maybe she doesn't need to blow off her responsibilities to the nice traders who have after all given her quite a lot of stuff and put up with quite a bit from her erstwhile husband at their fire the previous evening. Maybe she could have quite a good season with two paladins and a city boy under her tutalge, in some tremendous structure called a college like unto she'd never seen before - and these tribesmen are much cannier than the traders, recompense to be given after the fact.

She figures that even if she will take ship for somewhere thereafter (those Free Islands that the nice bartender mentioned sounded positively delightful, compared to some of the conditions she'd experienced in the New World, and certainly in need of a well-equipped lady good with axe) that waiting a season and acquiring an even fuller nest-egg for her flight couldn't hurt.

Finally, she meets one of the snakes from the previous evening. She daydreams idly about becoming one of them - it looks like it would be a good life, and certainly the kind that Coyote would approve of, neatly sidestepping the wrath-of-angry-dryads problem - but she doubts she really has the heart for it. Oh well - a season's work to do yet, and then she would see.


	3. Mirror

Tanya not like mirrors. In Tanya head, Tanya most beautiful woman, strong and healthy and clean, has best hair that never looks like birds nest in. In mirror is kind of short and kind of squishy around edges, has been sitting around too many fires drinking too many drinks, is kind of smudged and awkward around edges. 

Tanya does not need mirrors. Soon Tanya will be snake, or on ship, or in fighting army where it is not needed to look in mirrors. College altogether too civilised, too city for Tanya. Is marvellous building with good things for breaking with axe to teach breaking with axe, but is very city, and will be eaten by trees soon, Tanya does not doubt.


End file.
